As background for our invention U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,489 describes a switch and its protocol for making dynamic connections which has the basis of the switching products sold by International Business Machines Corporation under the trademark ESCON, which meets the so-called Fibre Channel Standard of ANSI referenced above as ANSI standard FC-P/92-001R3.0, Fibre Channel Physical and Signaling Interface (FC-PH).
The IBM Enterprise Systems Architecture/390 ESCON I/O Interface, hereafter referred to as the ESCON I/O Interface Architecture, does not support the interconnection of two or more dynamic circuit switches using dynamic connections, a capability hereafter referred to as dynamic switch cascading.
The standard does not define any protocols for dynamic switch cascading. This application addresses dynamic switch cascading.